When I think about the effect of animal products on human health, I'm reminded of how quickly we've done a national about face on tobacco, and I look forward to the day when we have a similar apology from someone who promoted animal products.

The West's three biggest killers -- heart disease, cancer, and stroke -- are linked to excessive animal product consumption, and vegetarians have much lower risks of all three. Vegetarians also have a fraction of the obesity and diabetes rates of the general population -- of course, both diseases are at epidemic levels and are only getting worse.

If we treated mental health more like physical health, no one would question why you'd need a day off from work to take care of yourself.

Mental health is just as important as your physical health when it comes to your overall well-being. If you don’t proactively address your mental health, you won’t be able to perform at your best. That’s why it’s a good idea to give yourself a day off from time to time to relax your mind.

In his new book, Learn Better, author and education researcher Ulrich Boser digs into the neuroscience of learning and shows why it’s so hard to remember facts like that one. Boser explains why some of the most common ways we try to memorize information are actually totally ineffective, and he reveals what to do instead.

Because we’re all getting dumber in the age of Google, I interviewed Boser recently about what people can do to boost their memories and skill sets, even if they’re long past flash-card age.

New research out of the Max Plank Institute in Germany suggests that practicing “dyadic meditation”—where two people meditate together—may help us feel closer and more open with others.

Dyadic meditation, the practice of meditating with a partner, has been shown to strengthen social relationships. Not just between the partners who meditated, but also in general. In a new study, participants of a nine-month course were said to have gained stronger motivation than those practicing solitary meditation as well as a better ability to self-disclose (willing to share information about themselves with partners).

If you’re a connoisseur of productivity methods—and even if you aren't—you’ve likely heard about "monotasking," the alternative to multitasking in which the name of the game is to stop juggling multiple tasks and instead focus deeply on one thing at a time. There are a handful of different ways to monotask, but one of them is a technique sometimes called "batching" or "mode-based scheduling," which author and productivity expert Michael Hyatt describes as "setting aside an intentional amount of time for intentional tasks and making an intentional effort to not allow the distractions or interjections of others break that focus."

Sounds great, right? If you're a freelancer, though, you may already be rolling your eyes. When you work independently, it's up to you and you alone to wrangle your ordinary workday—and ultimately, your whole workweek—into some sort of structure. Since there's nothing but your own personal decision-making that actually holds you to that structure, though, it's especially liable to come crashing down at any time.

But some freelancers and productivity experts have found a few ways to make batching work for them—not just on a daily basis but week after week, too. Here are a few ways to stick with monotasking if you're a freelancer fighting an onslaught of distractions on a regular basis.

How do we do it? How do we cultivate more compassion with ourselves, for our customers, for our coworkers?

We talk about four steps to creating more compassion in ourselves. The first step is noticing more. When we all get busy, distracted, or overloaded, we stop paying attention to the quality of other people’s lives. So notice more and you’ll automatically be more compassionate because you’ll see that people are in pain.

The second step is to slow down enough to interpret more generously. When a colleague makes a mistake, for instance, your first interpretation if you’re under a lot of pressure might be, “Stupid.” If you slow down a bit and say, “They’re trying, just like me. They’re overloaded, just like me. I could understand how they might have made that mistake,” that brings out more compassion in the system.

The third step is to cultivate your empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel concerned for what another person is going through, and if you interpret more generously, then that leads to the fourth step, which is stepping in to take action. So if you have a colleague who’s so overloaded that they’re making mistakes and you see it’s likely they’ll continue to do that, you may step in and offer to help. You may have a conversation with them about whether they’re aware of the pattern that they’re in. You may ask them if something else is going on in their life that’s contributing to this, that you could help alleviate. Those are the personal steps. Noticing, interpreting generously, feeling more empathy, and then taking some action.

Empathy is our inherent ability to perceive and share the feelings and thoughts of another. It allows us to connect with others who seem different, making us more aware of our commonalities. When we tune into empathy for others, we are more likely to act with compassion and altruism to help reduce their suffering. And, when we increase our caring for the environment, we are more likely to make choices that help preserve it for future generations.

Although empathy is a vital element of our nature, our civilization has not created the essential spaces, practices, and supporting ecosystems where it can be intentionally nurtured and unleashed towards the greater good. Yet research suggests that empathy can be taught, and that contact with people who are different from us in a safe, empathic way is a first step toward reducing prejudice.

This is where museums have a role to play. Museums are safe and informal learning platforms, uniquely equipped to encourage visitors to imagine, explore, and experience our rich human heritage and our natural world firsthand. They have the capability to bring together arts, technology, sciences, and literature to show how all living things are interconnected. They can also help fulfill an increasing demand for empathy in our lives, our workplaces, and our institutions.

The ability to learn is about more than building and strengthening neural connections. Even more important is our ability to break down the old ones. It's called "synaptic pruning."

Imagine your brain is a garden, except instead of growing flowers, fruits, and vegetables, you grow synaptic connections between neurons. These are the connections that neurotransmitters like dopamine, seratonin, and others travel across.

"Glial cells" are the gardeners of your brain—they act to speed up signals between certain neurons. But other glial cells are the waste removers, pulling up weeds, killing pests, raking up dead leaves. Your brain’s pruning gardeners are called "microglial cells." They prune your synaptic connections. The question is, how do they know which ones to prune?

Researchers are just starting to unravel this mystery, but what they do know is the synaptic connections that get used less get marked by a protein, C1q (as well as others). When the microglial cells detect that mark, they bond to the protein and destroy—or prune—the synapse.

This is how your brain makes the physical space for you to build new and stronger connections so you can learn more.

More than anything else, this election is eroding social trust. Most commentaries treat election stress like ordinary, everyday stress. But let’s be clear: The stress we’re feeling about this election can have profound effects on our individual and collective well-being.

Moral distress is no ordinary stress, and preserving social trust requires more than just taking a bath, watching comedies, or even meditating. Rather than turn to the usual stress-reduction strategies of distraction and self-soothing, it’s important to recognize what makes this election’s stress so toxic—and what we can do to turn that poison into good medicine. For ourselves, and for others.

This requires more than mindfulness. It calls for heartfulness—the courage to stay engaged, with an open heart and a determination to hold onto your faith in what connects us. In this spirit, I offer three strategies for transforming moral distress into moral courage, moral elevation, and compassion.

Mindfulness and meditation are becoming more and more common in schools. In fact, there are more than 4,000 teachers qualified to teach mindfulness in the U.K alone, and that number is growing rapidly. That’s because teachers are finding that mindfulness is helping children self-regulate and stay calm, translating into improved grades while reducing aggression amongst children.

A new study teases out the different benefits of four kinds of meditation. Mindful breathing isn’t the only place to start—and it’s not the end of meditation, either.

During every type of meditation, participants reported feeling more positive emotions, more energetic, more focused on the present, and less distracted by thoughts than they did before beginning—perhaps thanks to the attention training that’s common to all meditation. But that’s where the similarities ended.

“The type of meditation matters,” explain postdoctoral researcher Bethany Kok and professor Tania Singer. “Each practice appears to create a distinct mental environment, the long-term consequences of which are only beginning to be explored.”

Seventy years ago, Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who had just emerged from years as a prisoner at Auschwitz, shed some light on the question with a now-classic teaching. “Between stimulus and response, there is a space,” he wrote in 1946. “In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Mindfulness — the practice of watching one’s breath and noticing thoughts and sensations — is, at its core, a practice of cultivating this kind of space. It’s about becoming aware of how the diverse internal and external stimuli we face can provoke automatic, immediate, unthinking responses in our thoughts, emotions, and actions. As the University of Virginia’s Timothy Wilson has argued, our brains are not equipped to handle the 11-plus million bits of information arriving at any given moment. For the sake of efficiency, we tend to make new decisions based upon old frames, memories, or associations. Through mindfulness practice, a person is able to notice how the mind reacts to thoughts, sensations, and information, seeing past the old storylines and habitual patterns that unconsciously guide behavior. This creates space to deliberately choose how to speak and act. Organizations, like individuals, need this kind of space.

Calm is your brain’s normal default setting. It allows your physiology to run smoothly in a state of “rest and digest.” This relaxed calm gives you a sense of internal composure and emotional balance. When you’re humming along in calm, you are serene, focused, and content. And after any "survival mode" stress reaction, your brain is also wired to automatically recover this calm state.

But what if you’re feeling moderately stressed-- perhaps on edge, high strung, excitable, irritable-- with no recovery in sight? Perpetual moderate stress is a result of modern life, which can keep you in “hyper-alert mode.”

Unfortunately, when moderate stress is perpetual, a moderate amount of stress hormones are coursing through our veins, and we aren't equipped with an automatic reset button that shifts us from hyper-alert back to calm. As a result, your brain can get stuck there, resulting in that feeling of chronic stress and anxiety.

Research conducted by Greg Feist of San Jose State University found that when people let their focus shift away from others around them, they're better able to engage in "metacognition," the process of thinking critically and reflectively about your own thoughts.

Where things get tricky, though, is figuring out what to do in order to encourage metacognitive thought in the first place. When we're routinely overwhelmed with outside noise, carving out space for unstructured daydreaming takes planning, structure.

Sometimes the most productive periods of contemplation come to us unawares and don't last very long—but that doesn't mean they aren't useful.

The new Georgetown Law report argues that, since the effects of trauma can be physical, "body-mind" interventions, like yoga, may be able to uniquely address them. Regulated breathing, for example, calms the parasympathetic nervous system. Practicing staying in the moment counteracts some of the dissociative effects of trauma. And the physical activity of yoga, of course, can directly improve health.

The more raw material you give your brain, the more connections it can make. It works a little like hitting "shuffle" on a playlist—the more songs you load it up with, the more surprised you’ll be by the one that comes on next, which may lead you to think differently about both. Perhaps you’ll get an idea for a totally different type of playlist, get inspired to write a song yourself, or even begin to think of music differently as a whole.

The human brain thrives on a wide range of ideas and experiences, especially those it isn't expecting to encounter. In order to hit upon something really exciting, it first needs to wander, meander, shuffle about. Here’s how to help it.

When we have less to work with, psychologists have found that we actually begin to see the world differently.

Our environments either impel us to see things differently or they don’t. That implies that creativity is in many ways situational, not some inborn faculty or personality trait. When people face scarcity, they give themselves freedom to use resources in less conventional ways—because they have to. The situation demands a mental license that would otherwise remain untapped.

Seen in this light, resource abundance can actually be counterproductive. Our problems, challenges, and opportunities may become more manageable with constraints that direct us to make the best out of what we have. Without constraints, the research suggests, we tend instead to simply retrieve exemplary use cases from memory; we typically sit on a chair, so that’s how we think of chairs.

Real productivity is more than just activity, after all. And when we're asked to act upon (or ignore) hundreds of updates, requests, and interruptions every single day, to actually step back and decide can be much more difficult than to simply do. Amid all this bombardment, being truly productive depends upon your ability to say "no." In other words, what you don’t do on a daily basis is at least—if not more—important than what you actually do take action on.

Of course, saying "no" is easier said than done. Many of us have an intuitive desire to please others, to explore every opportunity, to take on more than we can handle, and worry about the consequences later. But if you can master the art of saying "no," you can prevent your time and focus from being held captive by a constant barrage of requests and distractions. Here are a few practical techniques that can help.

Management professor Christine Porath makes a clear and compelling case that rudeness and incivility in the workplace do more damage than good to work relationships and efficiency, soundly dispelling the myth of the hard-nosed-yet-effective boss. Instead, she argues, we would do well to practice civility at work.

Civility in American society has declined in recent years but remains important to people, according to surveys. When employers or employees ignore people at work, walk away from conversations, answer calls in the middle of meetings, publicly mock and belittle people, or take credit for wins while pointing fingers when things go sour, it destabilizes relationships and creates hostile work environments, says Porath. And research shows that poor relationships at work increase stress in ways that can impact employees’ health and relationships outside of work, leading to decreases in workplace performance—all of which costs the organization in the long run.

Rudeness can have a toxic impact on creativity and problem-solving, says Porath. In one experiment, participants did 33 percent worse on a puzzle involving anagrams and had 39 percent fewer creative ideas on a brainstorming task after being belittled as a group. In another experiment, even just witnessing incivility caused participant performance on the same tests to decrease by 20 and 30 percent, respectively.

“Rudeness affects your mind in ways you might not even be aware of, disrupting your ability to pay attention,” writes Porath. And it can even be deadly. In a survey of doctors and nurses, 71 percent tied “abusive personal conduct” in the workplace to medical errors they knew of, and 27 percent tied it to patient deaths.

It’s one of the most commonly doled out nuggets of professional advice: "Go with your gut." But it’s a very challenging system to consistently implement. "We spend our workdays in our outer world. We’re interacting with our team members and clients. We don’t have enough time in our inner world where we can reflect on those experiences and listen to what our gut might have to say," says Hana Ayoub, a professional development coach.

Why is trusting your gut so powerful? Because your gut has been cataloging a whole lot of information for as long as you’ve been alive. "Trusting your gut is trusting the collection of all your subconscious experiences," says Melody Wilding, a licensed therapist and professor of human behavior at Hunter College. "Your gut is this collection of heuristic shortcuts. It’s this unconscious-conscious learned experience center that you can draw on from your years of being alive," she explains. "It holds insights that aren’t immediately available to your conscious mind right now, but they’re all things that you’ve learned and felt. In the moment, we might not be readily able to access specific information, but our gut has it at the ready."

"I’ve never heard a client say, ‘I regret going with my gut,’" says Ayoub. Think of all the time and mental energy that can be conserved by not having to overthink your next move.

Pamir Kiciman's insight:

I always find it interesting that instinct is put above intuition. This article has good information. At the same time, I wish there were more articles on intuition. Instinct is good, it has its place. It's a more animal level of feeling things. Intuition is much more refined and can give one access to whole bodies of knowledge, not just a subset of data to make decisions and choices.

A survey by Fidelity Investments and the National Business Group on Health predicts that 22% of Fortune 500 companies will use mindfulness or brain training at the workplace by the end of the year, as a way to improve employee health and productivity, decrease absenteeism, and enhance quality of life. And the survey suggests that this number could double in 2017.

Anders Ferguson, founding principal and partner at the wealth management firm Veris Wealth Partners, jumped on the mindfulness-at-work bandwagon three years ago when he wanted to enhance the work habits of his employees. Partnering with three other investment firms, Ferguson implemented a variety of mindfulness practices. They let employees decide whether or not they wanted to participate, and 100% of them do.

All meetings start with a minute of silence, basic mindfulness breathing, and meditation. Employees are also encouraged to perform daily acts of compassion and appreciation with the people in their work and personal life, as well as random acts of kindness for strangers. Additionally, they’re encouraged to put down their digital devices for at least an hour each day.

Ferguson says the technique seems simple, but the results have included an increase in productivity and a decrease in stress. "The way many of us work is not working," he says. "Mental effectiveness has two fundamental rules: focus on what you choose, and choose your distractions mindfully."

While meditation is often perceived as a solitary practice, experts say there are several reasons why it’s better done as a group.

"Silent retreats, silent ​restaurants and even silent dating events are​ on the rise. Now a new film aims to – quietly – spread the word."

Discomfort is precisely where the radical power of silence lies, says Matthew Adams, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Brighton. “Silence is often something we experience as uncomfortable, as a rupture in the social fabric, an awkwardness we want to cover over with our voices.” Five of the best meditation apps Read more Adams has a long-term interest in the social, cultural and psychological significance of silence, and particularly in shared silence and electing to share silence. “Collective silence is about connecting with others in a way that gets underneath social conventions. It confronts us with what it feels like to be in the physical presence of other human beings without any games, strategies, reading or misreading of intentions. It is a temporary suspension of our reliance on talk.”

Silence assumes a new meaning in an era in which we are consuming information and engaging in conversation with each other endlessly, without ever opening our mouths. While we may watch The Pursuit of Silence and enjoy the absence of sound, how many of us will be tempted to check in with our emails, tweet our thoughts on the film? While we might find pleasure in those rare and cherished moments of peace and quiet, when it comes to silence and stillness, can we muster up the self-restraint at all?

Many cultures consider the human heart to be the seat of wisdom. Now scientists are finding some evidence for this, though the reality may be more complicated than it seems.

Previous research has suggested that higher heart rate variability (HRV)—the variability in the time between our heartbeats, which is a measure of heart health—is associated with better cognitive and emotional functioning. For example, higher HRV has been linked to better working memory and attention, higher levels of empathy and social functioning, and better emotional self-control. Could heart rate variability be linked to better moral judgments, as well?

Analyses showed that having high HRV was connected to wisdom, but only if individuals had been instructed to take a self-distanced perspective. Participants with high resting HRV (recorded before and after the experiments) who were assigned to the “self-distanced” perspective were significantly more likely to display wise reasoning and less biased judgments than those with high HRV assigned to the “self-immersed” perspective, while those with low HRV did not seem to reason or judge differently based on their assigned perspective. This suggests to Grossmann that having high HRV is not enough to improve one’s moral reasoning or to prevent bias, even if it has been tied to better thinking and emotional regulation in past research.

“The efficient processing of information or a lot of prefrontal cortex activity alone does not necessarily make you wiser. You also need to step beyond your own immediate self-interest for that,” he says. “So not everyone that has higher heart rate variability will suddenly be a wise person.”

In an adaptation from his new book, Dacher Keltner explains the secret to gaining and keeping power: focus on the good of others.

Whereas the Machiavellian approach to power assumes that individuals grab it through coercive force, strategic deception, and the undermining of others, the science finds that power is not grabbed but is given to individuals by groups.

What this means is that your ability to make a difference in the world—your power, as I define it—is shaped by what other people think of you. Your capacity to alter the state of others depends on their trust in you. Your ability to empower others depends on their willingness to be influenced by you. Your power is constructed in the judgments and actions of others. When they grant you power, they increase your ability to make their lives better—or worse.

In a society “where work is considered morally worthy,” being a workaholic might not seem like a serious problem, says Mary Blair-Loy, a sociologist and the founding director of the Center for Research on Gender in the Professions at the University of California, San Diego. “We live in a culture where work demands and deserves our undivided allegiance,” she says. And that sort of devotion does have its benefits. “You feel challenged by your work; you’re engaged by it; you’re learning new things; and you have the opportunity to shape other people’s careers. It’s extremely rewarding,” she says. But when you give all your attention to work, you eventually pay a steep price, according to Stewart Friedman, professor of management at the Wharton School and author of Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life. Working long hours, taking few vacations, and never truly being “off” — because of the ubiquity of digital devices — is “harmful to your relationships, your health, and also your productivity,” he says. Here are some tips to help you overcome your addiction.

Depression is already the leading cause of disability on the planet, affecting 350 million people of all ages, according to the World Health Organization. Despite its prevalence, the disorder is extremely difficult to study because it is so variable — which is why genetic research has so often failed. One psychiatrist likens it to looking for the genetic risk factors for fever.

Medication and psychotherapy remain the first-line treatments for major depression, though they help less than 40 percent of patients achieve remission of their symptoms. The state of the art in psychopharmacology remains the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, drugs such as Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft, which were first patented nearly 50 years ago. These SSRIs target the neurochemicals that carry information between neurons in the brain, but no one knows exactly how or why they work, and because the medications can’t lock in on specific neurons or regions of gray matter, they are more blunt instrument than precision tool.

That shortcoming is one major reason why scientists have shifted from neurochemicals to neurocircuits — the networks of cells that are activated every time we think, feel or move — to unravel the mysteries of depression.

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